


Stains

by WahlBuilder



Category: Mars: War Logs, The Technomancer (Video Game)
Genre: Con and Ian are alive and well, Emotional Hurt, M/M, Mel is a mess, Noctian Culture, Post-Canon, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Sean is alive and well, twenty headcanons in a trench coat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-31
Updated: 2020-01-31
Packaged: 2021-02-25 14:00:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,513
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22497244
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WahlBuilder/pseuds/WahlBuilder
Summary: Melvin is torn between what his heart desires and what he thinks he should desire, and runs from the Valley.
Relationships: Dandolo | Merchant Prince/Melvin Mancer
Comments: 2
Kudos: 3





	Stains

Melvin knows the story Sean is telling—though not because Melvin himself was present when it was happening. He was never present in Sean’s life when it mattered the most, and he should have made his peace with it a decade ago or so—most of those times of absence were by his own choice, after all. But he can’t—can’t make peace with his decisions and the lack of them, with resentment Sean must still be harboring and with Sean’s love; with being made obsolete, with feeling angry over it even though he shouldn’t define himself as Abundance defined him, even though in Noctis it doesn’t matter that he was decommissioned. He can’t make peace with himself and the world. Sand wanderers, Noctians call those dredges of spirits: not souls, not memories, but tatters of memories that someone living cannot go of. Maybe if Melvin’s family could let go of him, he would finally disappear.

Noctians learn to love and cherish people and things while they are here—and to let go when they are gone. Otherwise the winds can’t carry you, they say, with all the weight. But Melvin’s family have had so little in their lives, that they either hoard things and people or waste them indiscriminately.

Melvin shifts his focus onto the two who are listening to Sean, seated by his feet: Zach probably knows the story, but he’s enjoying the _way_ Sean is telling it, and the naked adoration in Zach’s eyes can rival the sun—but from time to time a shadow clouds his glowing eyes—maybe he’s afraid that Sean would be taken away again. Melvin knows Sean isn’t going anywhere, anymore.

And Andrew… Sometimes, Andrew calls Melvin “brother” and casts his gaze aside, rubbing the back of his neck with his left hand and wincing when wires snag on short hairs on the nape. He isn’t demure, but he is guarded, slow to show his feelings, to speak his mind unless it is something scalding, too used to being on lookout. In many un-straightforward ways, he’s both like Sean and like Zach. He fits right there—with them, wherever this might be leading them. He’s listening to Sean’s story with a half-smile, raising his brows now and again, exchanging glances with Zach.

Zach appears to be happy to share Sean with this one person—a marked difference, especially considering that he now has Sean fully, finally, and he was already so possessive of him before. He still is—it’s that Andrew is an exception.

“As all things should be…”

Melvin gets up and leaves Sean talking to his boys. It is not that their talk isn’t meant for him, or that he is unwelcome. It is that…

Melvin always envied his brother this ability to... banter smoothly. A quick report, back and forth, as though scripted, a Shakespearean play. A rhythm to it, and symbolism and references that are there purely for Sean’s own amusement. But it was always a wistful envy, too, because Melvin knows he would never be like this. He wouldn’t even try, and people wouldn’t tolerate it from him anyway.

He’s the disposable one, the one to shield with his body and cast his shadow upon others while he himself is expected to burn silently.

They love him because he _is_ , alive, because he’s _theirs_ —but if he’d been born somewhere else and then they had met him, they wouldn’t have even looked at him. Most people want to be loved for what they _are_ , and he feels unloved because nobody loves what he _does_. He isn’t upset about it. What he does is abhorrent. What he _did_. He was made un-needed, and he stumbles around blind, unable to think of something he might be useful for, even with plenty of opportunities around him, even when he _does_ something other than killing. He doesn’t think that he can ever truly internalize that people shouldn’t be “useful”. That he’s not a weapon, not a thing. He’s been treated like one all his life, he’s treated himself as one all his life.

The Valley burns him. There is this unspoken expectation that he is supposed to love it, to cherish it, to feel at home, to feel welcome—and not meeting that expectation sends him lower down the spiral of guilt and disappointment in himself. His family are free, resting, healing—why is he unhappy? And why should he even care about his own unhappiness?

He misses Noctis.

It is shocking, to miss a place and not just the people. When on tours, he missed the cafe he and Sean and Alex liked to frequent during their ventures into the city, the quiet of the Chapel, even Uncle’s office where, for some reason, he always felt listened to, empowered (and always found sweets in his pockets after his visits). He missed the Exchange because there he could always buy an outrageously impractical trinket for Sean; missed his fathers’ room because he could always hide there; he missed the sound of closing shutters because it meant he was home—with his family...

The place was always only the people, not the space itself.

And Noctis _is_ the people, too... But differently.

His family is his home—they are supposed to be. And yet.

He wonders whether it’s what Roy feels. Resenting not what he is, but being theirs.

It is strange, to find that Roy is not only _Sean’s_ brother. They are more like twins, despite the age difference—and Melvin feels a measure of protectiveness over Roy, too, even as he tries not to show it. Roy fought for his independence, and he needs time to sort through his connections, to decide which ones encroach onto his freedom and which ones are guiding lines. Melvin likes Roy. For all Sean’s bitterness, the heaviness in him is a learned thing. In Roy, it is his, just as it is in Melvin himself. Sean is heavier by absorbing the heaviness—Melvin and Roy are heavy, dark as something innate, coming from a deep well. Only, Roy managed to break his shackles, while Melvin...

A new coil in the spiral.

What right does he have to love anyone, to miss anything?..

He doesn’t kill anymore—but it’s not like Sean’s conviction. He doesn’t kill because it’s what Abundance used to have him do, not because life is sacred. There _is_ no value to life. He learned it on the front. There are empty symbols and ideas and words people die in suffering for, and nothing else. They all scream the same.

Sean’s refusal to kill stems from defiance, too, but much as he tries to pretend otherwise, it is from love more than from hate. He is a poet, a philosopher—life has no meaning on its own but it has the intrinsic value just because it _is_. Sean thinks that killing is robbing the world; killing chips away at your soul.

If there is a soul, Melvin would have none of it left.

Noctians don’t think there is something as ephemeral as a soul distinguished from everything else. Metaphorically, the heart is the seat of emotions: _Horuhoru taku manawa_ , “My heart is sobbing”.

Is Melvin’s heart sobbing?

He doesn’t think it can sob anything anymore, only scream. There is a fruit native to one of the northern enclaves. It shrivels when it dries, though it can be revived with enough water, but if squeezed in its shriveled dry form, it makes a thin screeching sound.

He used to want to scream, but he’s grown used to silencing himself. And yet it seems Dandolo can hear it anyway.

Dandolo’s heart sings, and sobs, too, all the time. Noctians have a strange ability of containing shades and tints and differences—though Melvin knows it is just that Mother has forced _him_ to see a simplified world, and in reality everyone is a hundred shades of contradictions.

Dandolo hates Abundance. And yet loves the people; he would have taken everyone out of Abundance’s rough hands—the canyons are big enough to get lost in. Dandolo’s heart is sobbing because he can’t reconcile his hate and his love. For a Noctian, a city is the people, and it is hard for Dandolo to understand that sometimes a city is an idea disconnected from the people. A monster-idea devouring the people.

Dandolo hates Ophir because it twisted someone he loves with his whole heart. Dandolo hates himself very often, too, because he feels he’s never doing enough. It is a strange point of connection, one that Melvin wishes hadn’t existed—not because he doesn’t want any connection at all, but because he wishes Dandolo didn’t think of himself like that. Dandolo is a person who does so much good and strives to do everyone good.

Melvin knows Dandolo killed, that he made mistakes that haunt him still—but Dandolo has grown, through and around and over that pain, those mistakes, the blood on his hands, but like a layer of a canyon, it’s all still there. Like a cut in a tree, it’s still there, weeping sometimes.

Melvin doesn’t think he can grow, himself. Iron trees don’t grow.

He’s read his kin’s musings on the iron trees, and the rituals venerating them remain—but to Melvin, they appear in nightmares. Piercing the flesh of those he loves, their growth through their living bodies an obscene mockery of life. Abundance wants to pretend it’s better like this, Abundance conquers—the land, the trees, the people, life itself. Look at Her triumphs! The iron trees will be Her legacy, for ever.

Abundance knows no end and has forgotten Her beginnings, it is eternal, immortal. Immoral. A-moral, as in—beyond morals. Peoples will rise and fall, people will be born and then will die—and Abundance will stand, unchanged.

But rust conquers iron so easily, and harbors disease.

In Melvin’s dreams, Abundance grows through him. Flows in his blood—white-hot metal poured through steel veins. It covers him with thick armor and forces him to pose however She wants. He takes a breath—and She flies in, scorching his throat, robbing him of his voice, covering his vocal chords with iron so that it booms as Her cannons do.

In his dreams, he is forced to forget what it’s like, to be human. To be fragile, to feel, to sob, to laugh, to know anger and joy, to want a kiss. Forced to forget what it’s like, to draw.

He is afraid of his dreams. He spills blood in them, and the iron of that blood only strengthens Her. Her thirst unquenchable. He is Her teeth, Her claws, Her gullet.

He was born a mutant, property from birth, his existence pre-planned, charted in its entirety. He’s in the Valley because he’s a mutant, because he’s a tool that’s run away. The Valley doesn’t want _him in particular_. They want what he is, not what he does, not what he thinks, what he loves or hates or creates or destroys.

He is starving.

Wind touches his burning cheeks, calling to him—and he takes the stairs three at a time, and when he sees the distant solidity of the gates, he breaks into a run.

The Valleians call to him, but he doesn’t listen—they are already behind. The gates are behind, and—he grabs the edge of the gondola roof and throws himself into the seat. The sails open with a heavy flap, dust rising around the _waka_. _Ocio_ looks down at him, brilliant in the light of the late afternoon, and Melvin feels _seen_. With all his flaws and nightmares and murders he’s committed, but—seen. With his hopes and fears, skills and aspirations. As he is. As everything he does and didn’t do and wants to do.

He sets sail.

His sandsail... Not “his”, of course, but a sliver of generosity of the city—it is a fast asym. The sole outrigger, when Melvin glances at it, is weighted by some cargo. The Valley thinking goes: why waste time and space when non-urgent cargo can be strapped to a ready vessel? And they know he travels often to Noctis. He doesn’t mind to carry it.

He knows how to drive a rover, but doesn’t do it well: it feels unwieldy, like a heavy trap, too charged up for him to be comfortable inside it in any way.

In a sandsail, he flies.

Faster and faster, the closer he gets to the city. He doesn’t need to check landmarks or direction anymore—the wind carries him. For a terrible moment that sends sparks dancing on edges and points in the cabin, he is lost in time and can’t remember what gate he should use. But then panic is swept away, and he hails the Guard and gives his name. They welcome him.

He is welcome.

Noctis greets him. Springing out of the sandsail, he stops to listen; to breathe in. The sand and the winds and the rock and metal and leather and people, people, people; languages, and colors, and scents.

Behind his lids, his eyes burn with tears.

He breathes out love.

He is in love with the city—that is, he is in love with Dandolo’s city. And he worries that it might be a wrong kind of love, not a love at all. Noctians don’t like it when their city is taken only as exotic, only as its colors and scents and sounds and nothing that binds them together, no system to them, no various cultures that meet and merge here. Their city is not for consumption—that is, Noctians are not for consumption, because they _are_ their city and many of them know what being for consumption feels like. Dandolo knows what it feels like, what it is like, and though he never speaks about it, Melvin knows that the worst horrors lurk in silences such as these.

Melvin knows he is in love with Dandolo, too. But maybe it is, like with the city, a wrong kind of love. Of course, it is ugly—because Melvin himself is ugly, through the nature of being who he is, of having done what he has done. Perhaps for now it is only a fierce obsession, burning him from the inside—but what if it grows, fueled by his own self, and spills out and burns the city down?

So he must not let it out. Even though he thinks Dandolo sees it.

Dandolo is not infallible—but he knows his mistakes and his faults and tendencies. So he brings close people who are not afraid to point those faults out to him, who can force themselves to resist his charm, those who would call him a bastard to his face.

But the system itself fosters such relationships, too. Melvin has been studying it as a way of not making Noctis a thing to consume.

The _Doxe_ is bound by arms and legs. While in office, their assets belong to the city except for a very narrow range of personal items. They cannot profit from their caravans, from their trade—the city profits instead, and when leaving the office, their assets return to them in the same state as they were taken, nothing more. The _Doxe_ is given only a small allowance for personal items, and the accommodation, food, etc. are provided by the city, since the _Doxe_ resides in the Palace, and account is held on all expenses. Even then, that small allowance must be spent only in the city itself, and cannot be saved.

The _Doxe_ gives themself over to the city completely.

It is strange.

Abundance takes. She doesn’t ask—all of them belong to her, they are hers, she can take them and use them and repurpose them and break them and discard them, however she pleases.

Noctis is: “Here is your _Doxe_ —if you please.”

Noctis has a simple relationship with those who only take: Noctis hates them. They have no place here.

It is strange. Slavery was forbidden not so long ago—but it was running contrary to what Noctis _is_ for much longer than that. Melvin turns pages of Noctian history, and sees mistakes and blood, and sees learning from those mistakes. There are no pompous proclamations to the likes of “We are one happy family!”, but there is a marked business-like tone and yet the tone of humility, too. “Whatever has brought you here, we are in this together. Remember that.”

For twenty years Melvin had been defined by how efficiently he could kill. For twenty years Melvin had tried, but so often failed, to define himself by his protection for his family, useless as it was. He has been discarded for a year: a jammed weapon is dangerous to its wielder. And now, he is ejected from places he at least found familiar. Freedom is terrible, he finds. He would have asked the Valleians how they deal with it—but he doesn’t feel like he has the right to ask anything.

Scum says that the cage inside one’s own head is the most difficult to break out from, and Melvin thinks it’s too late for him.

And it is frustrating, this seething anger, this continuous feeling of uselessness—he is the ambassador! he explores Noctis and the Valley! he has started drawing again! He is alive and free and most members of his family are alive and free, what kind of fucking right he has to complain and feel so terrible?

And yet he does. He doesn’t tell anyone, but he thinks his fathers notice something is wrong.

The weapon is broken and decommissioned, but it should have been recycled instead of being left to rust.

Sometimes he feels burdened by them—by his own family. He wonders whether that’s what Roy feels, too. The need to scream and to run until the sands swallow him. The need to not be himself anymore.

He was always useless. Not a scholar, not good at being a teacher or a trainer, not good enough or charming enough or sycophantic enough or clever enough to go up the ranks. That he’s made a major is still a mystery to him. Not shrewd enough to get useful connections.

All he is— was, was a body which he could offer to Abundance like a feeble sacrifice in hope She would spare those more worthy of sparing. That illusion kept him going when he wanted nothing more than to shoot himself. Of course, sometimes he felt resentment towards his family, but he thinks it was so childish. They were the only ones he had, he shouldn’t have lashed out on them.

A jammed weapon tends to misfire.

Why does he think that Noctis would want him? That Dandolo would want him?..

His feet bring him to his rooms in the Palace. There is a small balcony, looking over the Caravanserail—not very high above, and though usually Melvin might feel uneasy even at such height, the city is too captivating a view to think about it. The balcony isn’t even tucked out of sight: the guards walking the gallery and below would look up and raise a hand in greeting, and Melvin would reply the same. Feeling seen in a way that doesn’t make him feel like a target.

The rooms themselves are partitioned by a big arch, so that it feels as though it is one room, plus a scattering of screens here and there, blank for now. Both the door to the balcony and the door leading into the hallway can be seen almost from any point in his quarters. It is out of the usual paths through the Palace, so strangers wouldn’t be able to find him. The balcony is high enough that nobody can climb up to it—nobody except for Dandolo.

There is a plant by the balcony in a clay pot. Melvin has forgotten what it’s called, but he does remember that Seven-Eighteen said it doesn’t need much. Except for talking. Melvin is supposed to talk to it once in a while, otherwise it would wither. It has a thick stem and dark-red leaves fanning away from it. Seven-Eighteen said that if Melvin is diligent enough with care, it might produce a fruit.

It is not _Melvin’s_ quarters, just like the asym he flies, but they were empty and he chose them for now. The whole Palace, though enormous and easy to get lost in, feels more welcoming than the straight corridors of the dormitory back in Ophir.

Already, tension seeps out of Melvin’s shoulders. Noctis doesn’t demand anything from him.

He goes to the desk, needing to put his mind off the spiralling track.

Dancing fans, those used for the Carnival, are kept simple. They acquire color from use, powders and colored sand seeping into and remaining in the woven fabric. The handles are unadorned also. These fans are beautiful through the history of use, the hands that bear them. There are fans that date back to the time when Noctis was but a few tents pitched in safety of the deep canyons.

Other fans are different. Usually the membrane is made from tightly-woven cloth, and then the pattern is in the fabric itself. Or it can be paper, laminated or not, hand-poured and colored, or painted on. There are a few glass fans, and Melvin has seen two, and though he was told that they _can_ be used for dancing, he was afraid to even _breathe_ near them. They looked like they were made from air and light. Even though he knows just how hardy Noctian glass can be. Noctians adorn things, create some just for the beauty of them or for the sake of creating—but things should be used. Noctians are survivalists.

He considers the fan open before him on the desk. It isn’t very big, only a palm and a half length at the ribs. Dandolo has larger dancing fans. This one is covered with paper, light but sturdy, with a slight stretch. It isn’t laminated and it is slightly translucent, like a thick fog that sometimes greets Melvin in the morning, bringing him melancholy or fear that Noctis has been nothing but a beautiful dream.

The paper would absorb ink quickly. Pastels are too flaky and wouldn’t endure heat or light, even though the tenderness of color would suit the bluish-white of the paper. But this fan is not to be mounted on a stand—it is to be used for dancing practice. Inks would suit better. Melvin has only one attempt. His strokes will have to be sure, his hand steady and perfectly executing what he has in mind. Covering up a mistake would bring too much ink to one spot, and it would seep through or ruin the fibers entirely.

He will have to be absolutely certain and in absolute control of himself, and not _waste_ the fan itself.

He pushes his worries away, draws a steadying breath. He looks at his equipment: two bottles of ink, one azure, another black; two dip pens with tips already fitted; a brush. He takes the bottles and shakes them just to be sure, in horizontal plane to not form bubbles.

And then, he sets to work.

He paces, waiting for inks to dry. It’s an exercise in restraint, and he’s bad at it. Anxieties gnaw at him, and he winds himself up with anger and disappointment with himself: his family is fine, he’s in Noctis, why is he anxious? Why is nothing enough for him? _Why is he like this?_

Unstable. Broken. Useless. Pathetic.

He blabbers to the plant Shadow knows what: about the small room in the Valley, cut into the wall of the canyon like a tomb, about his right glove malfunctioning and though he has sworn to never kill again, he needs to maintain his equipment nonetheless, just in case of he doesn’t know what; about the story Sean was telling to his boys; about his worry over Roy and Roy’s, with the now-distant but not non-existent threat of another war between Abundance and Aurora, and the Auroran Order is broken free but what if they are captured, what if they are made into what the Ophirian Order used to be? Melvin _would_ kill then. They don’t deserve that, they don’t, they don’t, nobody does, it’s hell, it’s trauma that goes down through generations. He won’t allow it. He can’t.

He paces and paces and paces, trying to keep his steps perfectly the same so that the clicking of his boots on the tiles gives him a rhythm. Something to hold onto while his mind is all over the place.

He should be with them. He should go back to the Valley and be with his family, and swallow down that ungrateful shit about not wanting to be there, not feeling loved enough. They are his family, for fuck’s sake. They picked him up when he was in ruins. And picked him up again, and again, and forgave him for being absent. Maybe. Probably. Connor did, maybe Ian did, too, but he is certain Sean will never forgive. But Melvin has to be there.

“What agitates you so, Master Melvin?”

Melvin runs into a wall. Or, as though runs into it, that is to say, runs into Dandolo’s voice, endlessly tender and warm, and the soft gaze of his clever green eyes, and—of course, most people would use the doorway but Dandolo climbed up onto the balcony. Or, down onto the balcony.

He is in a sleeveless carmine tunic, the upper layer gone, leaving only four, as far as Melvin can see—and Shadow, he cannot look away even though he should. Dandolo fills and over-fills the exit to the balcony entirely, and has to angle himself sideways a little to get in, and it is not that Melvin has a particular interest in broad men, it is just—Dandolo. Broad shoulders and green eyes and tenderness and patience and the willingness to work through differences and to understand.

It’s “Master Melvin”. Zach calls him like this sometimes, too, and Andrew, and others, but it never fit him. What mastery can he transfer to them—the thirty ways how to stop someone breathing? But the way Dandolo uses it is different.

Light dances on a green glass bead over Dandolo’s left shoulder, and Melvin wants to stride to him, and kneel, and take his big warm hands and put his face in them. Take in the scent of leather and paper and sand, the zesty sweetness of oranges.

His heart cries out, squeezed by love.

But he doesn’t _dare_.

Dandolo’s face softens, although there are lines at his brows from how often he furrows them. “Melvin.” Dandolo calls him like the wind calls: gently yet difficult to deny.

Melvin doesn’t want to deny him—doesn’t think he can. Maybe the cage in his head isn’t broken, maybe it’s just slave mentality, and it’s an ugly thought. Dandolo deserves better than to be a substitute for Melvin’s former masters.

Yet some part of Melvin rebels and says it is untrue. That it isn’t that he would accept a hand, any hand, holding his leash. He isn’t a dog, he isn’t a weapon. He isn’t broken. He just wants—this. This city and Dandolo with it.

He looks away, at the plant—a quiet witness to his mad ranting. “I... decided to come to Noctis earlier than planned. This fan... I promised it. I settled on the design.” He goes to the desk, hoping it doesn’t look like retreat—hoping his body doesn’t betray just how much he wants to go _to_ Dandolo, wants to do something stupid. Like kissing him, and begging him to not let go.

“May I see it?”

The voice startles him, even though it shouldn’t—but not in surprise. Rather, it rolls down him—like a hand over his spine, the way Dandolo usually keeps a hand on his back while sleeping, Melvin spending hours looking at him and dying from love little by little.

He glances at Dandolo—finds him not having moved. Waiting for permission.

“Yes.” He steps away, a tremble in his chest, his arms. He fears that in a few moments, sparks might fly again, ignite the fan, the plant, the air, giving substance to the burning he feels all the time.

Dandolo bends slightly to the desk, his profile to Melvin, traced with fingers and pencil many times. The wings of his nostrils, the thickening of the bridge of his nose, the grooves of the tattoos.

From the first day Melvin saw him—in the Docks, hailing Zach, welcoming them into the city of freedom, Melvin was hungry. He was always hungry, and now he knows it, admits it, fears it. Not because he can’t have what he lusts after but exactly because he _can_.

“If you would rather I come later...”

He snaps out of it. He can continue his self-flagellation some other time. “No. It’s... I’d rather you see it now.” He bites his tongue on “please”, but Dandolo glances at him—a sliver of green—and Melvin thinks the unspoken has been heard anyway.

Dandolo reaches to the fan, and straightens up, holding it in both hands. “This is very beautiful, Melvin,” he says—not with a gasp of surprise or delight, but the quietness of his voice, the way he strokes the handle, speak everything Melvin wants to know.

“It is rather simple,” Melvin says, curses himself internally. He shouldn’t be explaining or excusing his work. It is unworthy, but to voice his own opinion would undermine Dandolo’s, as though his pleasure is _less_ compared to Melvin’s bitterness.

“Simplicity fits it,” Dandolo says generously. “The lines of the canyon would be visible from a distance, but the birds would be not. Just for me to admire—and for someone else who would hold it close.” Dandolo looks at him, and heat rushes to Melvin’s cheeks. He should be too old to be floored by the calm invitation in the eyes of the person he loves, and yet here he is.

“There is something else.” He swallows, tries to furl his field back close to his body.

Dandolo keeps saying again and again that he doesn’t mind his electricity at all. From a threat to Dandolo it has turned, in Melvin’s mind, into a reminder of something else: lazy mornings ending with him gasping, undone; Dandolo’s hand seeking his during the packed Council meetings; wrestling until both of them are drenched in sweat and covered in sand and guards giggle or Fran tells them to get a room.

His abilities—turning from a tool of pain into just another part of himself. His hands having the power to bring death—and to sketch the city of his heart, the people he loves.

He gestures at the fan. “Close it.”

Dandolo does—slowly, carefully. Melvin is quietly proud to see that the ink holds. And then more than pleased, the tips of his fingers tingling, when Dandolo exhales at the sight of the folded fan. Dandolo turns it so that the long stretch of it is like a line—it _holds_ a line. The canyon and the city and the birds turn, on the folded edges, into words of a poem.

_if I can stop one heart from breaking_

“I think she might have been delighted to see this beautiful thing,” Dandolo says, a smile making the crow’s feet gather at his eyes.

“Only if you mailed it to her,” Melvin blurts out.

Dandolo laughs—quietly, a low rumble, like a distant quake or maybe a storm or, a rarity, movement of a worm. Sometimes it doesn’t matter which, on the plains.

“Thank you, _Corvo_. I will be honored to use it for practice.” Dandolo looks down at the fan again, the poem a dark, uneven line—the best Melvin could do. Without flourishes, imperfect from ink seeping slightly into the folds—it is the foundation of the whole drawing.

“It needs to be sealed first, you have to wait some more.”

Dandolo opens the fan and carefully places it on the stand. Then looks at Melvin, and Melvin can hardly breathe from the want plain on Dandolo’s face, in his eyes—without demand, an invitation. Demands might come later, if Melvin so wishes.

“I am in a company where I wouldn’t mind waiting at all.”

Melvin considers the possibilities. He can do it, if only for a little while. He reaches to Dandolo and takes his hand.

Dandolo looks down and smiles again. “I like it when your hands are covered in chalk, or pencil, or ink.” Then he brings it up and kisses Melvin’s knuckles, his gaze on Melvin’s face.

Shock races through Melvin from this point of contact, burning away his fears, insecurities, anxieties, nightmares. For now, he’s filled only with the fire of need.

He smiles to Dandolo. “I know what to entertain you with, _me Doxe_.”


End file.
